The Doctor and the Girl (1949)

October 31, 1949

The Doctor and the Girl,' With Glenn Ford and Janet Leigh, Arrives at the Mayfair

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Published: October 31, 1949

That lofty infatuation which Metro has frequently shown for dramatic combinations of medical practice and romance is once more demonstrated in that studio's "The Doctor and the Girl," a nice little bedside tear-jerker that came to the Mayfair on Saturday. Patrons who go for clinical details neatly packaged with sentiment and love should find it an alluring experience—slightly gruesome, of course, but full of hope.

The bright Hippocratian, in this instance, is a young doctor, cool and smug, who starts out to follow in the footsteps of his famous and didactic dad. But then he internes at Bellevue and slowly his heartless attitude, inspired by his Park Avenue papa, is thawed by the misery he beholds. One night, on E. N. T. (Ear, Nose, Throat), he loses a tonsilectomy case—a child—by an untractable hemorrhage and he has to tell the youngster's folks. That sends him flying to the comfort of a little Third Avenue candy clerk whom he casually admitted in P. O. (Pre-Operative) and who is awaiting an operation for a deep abscess of the lung.

Well, after that pretty operation (performed by one of his father's old friends) he decides, against his father's dire predictions, to marry the convalescent girl. This done, the two set up housekeeping—and a G. P. office—on Third Avenue, and the young man gets plenty of experience working on the poor but grateful East Side folk. In fact, one tracheotomy which he and his brother-in-law (a pediatrician) perform on a laryngeal "dip" case—another youngster—in a Harlem slum is a most disturbing jolt.

But the climax comes when his own sister, who has rebelled against papa, too, requires an immediate operation for a very dangerous and unmentionable cause. This time the affair is really ticklish, with the old family friend operating again. There is a desperate, ding-dong struggle on the table to save her, but—well, you get the idea.

In the role of the noble young doctor, Glenn Ford does a satisfactory job of solemnly and tenderly conveying the torch flung by Dr. Kildare, and Janet Leigh is winsome and bewitching as the little pre-operative case. Charles Coburn evokes some slight feeling from the wooden role of the doctor-father, while Gloria De Haven is flouncy as the sister who is fatefully indiscreet. Others who lend some mild distinction to this crisply presented but exaggerated tale are Bruce Bennett, Basil Ruysdael and Warner Anderson.